CraftyGrrrl.ca

Last night I attended an advanced beaded lace knitting class with Laura Nelkin at LettuceKnit. In addition to learning how to incorporate beads into my lace work, I learned the gentle art of the nupp, the nemisis of many a lace knitter. They are tricky little buggars but I think I have it!

Sorry about the crap photo, but the proper camera battery is currently charging.

The class was well timed as I have a little plan/goal I’m setting for myself for the summer and the tips & tricks I picked up in the class will serve me well…

My only resolution this year was to get a grip on some new textile realted skills and so far I seem to be holding it up nicely.

In March I signed up for a weaving course so I could finally know how to use my floor loom Edna II. The 10 week course is run by the city of Toronto and held at the Cedar Ridge Creative Center (the old carriage house has been converted into a super awesome pottery shed) which is about 20 minutes by car from my house, or 40 minutes by transit. The other four ladies in my class have been taking weaving courses there for a few years, so that told me something about the quality of the classes! Since I have been weaving on a rigid heddle for a few years now, Christine (my instructor) decided to not make me do the standard first two projects she assigns and gave me the option to choose what I wanted to do. As I’ve never woven on a floor loom I chose to make a set of placemats in a light pink & grey 8/2 mercerized cotton.

After my 5th class I cut my first project off the loom.

Four placemats (two with just the grey thread as weft and two with alternating weft of pink & grey) with just enough warp left over to weave a mini mat that I can put the salt & pepper, assorted condiments in the center of the table.

After the show & tell at class I got down to business of winding off the warp for my next project, a houndstooth plaid wool blanket. The draft came from The Pinwheel: An Exploration in Colour-and-Weave Design which I picked up a few years ago from Camilla Valley which is where Iordered the yarn I’m using as well, Canadian Collection in chocolate brown & raspberry.

By the end of class lat week, I had 1/2 the heddles threaded. The plan for tomorrow night is to finish the threading, sley the reed & start weaving…we’ll see how that works in reality…

My little house is in a slight state of chaos as we are in the throes of a bathroom reno two years ahead of my schedule. Some tiles decided to fall off the wall and we discovered that the drywall behind it was anything but dry. Last Monday my brother in law and I started the demolition and discovered an unexpected surprise which will be increasing the reno costs and extending the time my house will be in chaos.

Thankfully, I have fibery pursuits to help take the edge off.

I’ve had a slightly productive few weeks of knitting and am more than a little behind with the documenting it. In March, I finished what is quite possibly my favouritest sweater. EVER!

Warriston by Kate Davies, knit using 2 & a bit skeins of Cascade Eco. I love it, it’s warm & comfy, everyone should knit one.

My little cousin turned 1 this month so I knit her a little cardi and an Aviatrix hat.

There are a few other things to share, but I’ll save them for my next post so that this one doesn’t become a massive, rambling behemoth.

Fingers crossed by weeks end I’ll have my new bathroom containing a tub with a 14” soaking depth and be getting ready to fix the not so little unexpected surprise we uncovered. It’s a good thing I have a nice little yarn stash as I don’t see there being a yarn category in the budget for some time…

Every so often I come across a sock yarn I really fancy. I fancy it so much that I forget that I am not all that fond of knitting socks as I suffer from a serious case of second sock syndrome. This could easily be solved by wrapping my brain around the technique of knitting one sock inside the other like that character from War & Peace, but right now, socks just aren’t my thing, not that it has stopped me from buying sock yarn in the past with the hope that things will change.

Since nothing has changed vis a vie my relationship with knitting socks and I’m holding to my New Year’s resolution to reduce the stash & purchase yarn only when absolutely nothing on hand will work, I’m coming up with alternative uses for my sock yarns. The loom has been the most usefull sock yarn stash buster and consequently a few gifts have been ticked off a list, but I have a few balls of single ply sock yarns that are not the best for warping a loom as they just don’t hold together under tension & it’s broken warp-a-palooza surrounded by a cloud of some of the foulest language possible.

Ravelry, however, has some really great ideas for none sock or weaving uses for these few balls of sock yarn…

As I’m also itching for a new transit/travel project that is a little more exciting than what I’m currently working on I believe I may have the perfect solution! I just have to decide between Summit, Wellenbaktus, Spectra, Creekbed, Daybreak or Akimbo (I’m not sure about you, but I’m sensing a theme…) or Coquille.

With the previous months sweater knitting issues I needed something fast & easy to take the edge off. I tried & discarded a few projects in the search for An Easy Win™. Yesterday, the answer popped up in my blog reader; Heidi of My Paper Crane posted instructions for a super easy & fast crochet cowl and I knew this was IT!

With some left over yarn (either Manos Del Uruguay or Malabrigo, can’t remember which), a J hook, a cup of tea at my side & a few more episodes of Edwardian farm I set to work. There were a few false starts but then I found the right gear. At 11 pm last night I was done, would have been done sooner but there were kids to fetch from school, grocery shopping, dinner, kids bedtime etc that TOTALLY got in the way!

I might make another one today in black with some left over yarn from Driven…or I could work on Warriston. One of these days I’ll write about my girly crush on Kate Davies designs…but not today, there is laundry that needs doing & either a sweater or aother cowl to be made…

The husbeast & I have an inside joke that Sarah Lund’s full name really should be Sarah Lund Life Ruiner! If you watch the show it will all make sense…or not.

It appears that her sweater should have a similar name…after knitting the body to the armpits, I’ve come to accept that the gauge swatch was a filthy liar! The sweater is already baggy & will grow to epic 80s porportions with blocking. Wasn’t all that fond of the 80s when I lived through them the first time and am even less fond of the current attempt by BIG FASHION to bring it back. I will not suffer bad 80s style sweaters in my house!

The sweater will be frogged and the yarn repurposed for Warriston, which will hopefully fit properly!

By the way, have a look at the fairisle blanket in the banner of Kate Davies (designer of Warriston) blog…It’s called Rams & Yowes, I kinda love it, a lot and Jamieson & Smith sell kits for it It would be a nice birthday gift if anyone is paying attention!

My main New Years resolution was to add/improve to my fiber skills, although these skills won’t necessarily make me more attractive to potential employers (unless it’s a yarn store…oh to dream!) but are still plenty useful!

While stash wrangling I uncovered a long forgotten crochet scarf, I could no longer remember how to make the pattern stitches and had also become a little covetous of Cal Patch’s Wingfeathers shawl. Knowing that I am a visual learner and books can only teach me so much, I did what any smart girl would do, I called Lettuceknit for a private crochet class with Megan. She got me well sorted (she is an excellent teacher, laid back & adjusts to your pace) and I was off to the races. Anne was done in an afternoon, Wingfeathers became my transit project for the next few weeks, Megan was at Knit Night this past week when I cast it off!

Wingfeather blocking under threat of a cat invasion. What is it with cats & their sick need to take a nap on your blocking wollens?!

Yarn: Handmaiden Mini Maiden

Colour: Couldn’t tell you if my life depended on it

Hook: 3.5mm (E)

I’m now riding a little high on my new hooking skills. Wool Eater is looking pretty tempting as my next crochet project. It will do some serious double duty as a skill enhancer & take out a large portion of my sock yarn stash!

This past weekend in Ontario (and a few other provinces) it was Family Day weekend & in the States it was Presidents Day. These two holidays combined made for a VERY busy weekend at work, according to the “Thank you” email sent out by my boss to my department, there were just shy of 19000 visitors. That’s a butt load of people, there was a line out the door that snaked around the corner of the building till about 3:30 each day. To say the least I am tired, my throat is sore and I’m finding the silence and solitude of my house very, very delicious!

After crazy busy weekends like this (we will see numbers like this during the Holiday break in December, March Break, Family day, the last weekend of a very popular exhibit etc) I will spend a day just in recovery. Minimal house work will be done, dinner will be a slow cooker affair & I will take to the couch for some knitting & guilty pleasure TV until the ringing in my ears stops (it gets so loud sometimes I’m reminded of being in a nightclub) & I feel like encountering humanity again.

My recovery knitting will be the Sarah Lund Sweater I started last week. The pattern that was released as part of the series 3 of The Killing announcement was in a typically European fashion really light on the instructions. I have a theory for why this is, from what I understand knitting is taught as part of the curriculum in a number of Scandinavian (and a few other countries) public schools as it helps childrento develop a number of skills (math, small motor etc). As with any skill one develops early, there are techniques & habits that become second nature and never occur to the knitter to include those instructions. Anyone who has tried to learn a cherished family recipe from their Grandma or Great Aunt knows of what I speak! Frustrated with the pattern, I did what any sane knitter would do, I turned to Elizabeth Zimmermann. Armed with my copy of Knitting Without Tears, a sweater that had been knit out of the same yarn acted as a giant gauge swatch, a calculator, some graph paper, measuring tape and a very large mug of Rooibos De Provence I got down to business. Measurement were taken &  numbers crunched, I did this a few times as there is nothing worse than getting 3/4 of a way through a sweater only to realize it’s 2 sizes too big or 2 small! After my third round of consistent numbers, I got to work using Elizabeth’s fail proof (unless you totally effed up your math!) Percentage System to knit my sweater from the hem up. The chart for the snowflake pattern at the yoke required a bit of tinkering to get the numbers right, but then I was good to go.

I’m a pretty dedicated no seams knitter (one of these days I will get over it, but for now I’m happy), I hate seams mainly because I’m terrible at it and being a curvy gal, I hate the bulk they can sometimes add to a garment. I like my sweaters to be knit with no seams and a nice amount of waist shaping to eliminate that unfortunate boxy look some of us were terrorized with in the 1980s.  Elizabeth has you start your sweater from the bottom hem, I’v only knit one sweater like this before so I’m lacking a bit of confidence in the sweater coming out like I imagine, but we will have to see. The nice thing about seamless sweaters is you can try them on as you knit and tweak as necessary. This is also why I have a preference for toe-up socks.

I’m knitting the sweater with about 2” of positive ease so I can get a long sleeve shirt underneath it and pair it with my puffy vest to double as a winter “coat” on those days when my jacket would be too warm but my trench would be too light. The yarn is that most beloved Cascade Ecological, great yarn with excellent yardage for the 20$ a skein price tag, I can easily get a sweater out of 2 skeins, 3 if I do cables. Can’t really argue with a $40 handknit sweater!

I expect by the time I need to leave to pick up the kids, I should be done with my waist shaping and the sleeves will become my travel project as I’m almost done my current one.

This will have it’s own post shortly…

Providing I don’t run into any silly errors with my Sarah Lund Sweater, I just might be able to beat my current record of knitting a sweater in 16 days and then will start in on a sweater for my Dad which he has been patiently waiting for since I gave him an “I O U a sweater” card as his Christmas gift about 3 years ago. Which remindes me, Mum: I need his chest measurments!

During the Great Stash Clean-Up of Ott12, I put all of my works in progress (WIPs) in a big bag with the plan being I was going to finally hack my way through the ones I still wanted or frog those that left me wanting.

After an afternoon spent in a mini frog fest, I got to work on Project: Get This Stuff Off The Needles! Everythign was going great, I completed a crochet project that had been taunting me for about 4 years, cast off my NaKniSweMo project, got a few other items ticked off the list but things went south when I turned my attention to Every Last Yard. I swear this project is becoming my Moby Dick (or some more relevant litterary reference)! It’s the lace patten, it’s taking me an inordinate amount of time to “get it”, which is nuts as it’s a simple 9 stitches repeated till the end of the row with a 4 row repeat and I keep messing it up!

The better part of January was spent knitting, ripping & repeating the first 4 rows of the lace on the body till it suddenly clicked and I was able to complete the body, then came the sleeve… Sleeves are the last part of a sweater I knit, it’s my home run and yet, it’s also where I often run out of steam and the sweater finds itself sidelined for something new and shiny. I was determined to not let that happen to ELY, it’s a great looking & fitting sweater, knit out of Indigodragonfly’s Merino Silk DK in the Edward Discovers Woodchippers Make Excellent Juicers colourway and yet, I’m being thwarted…I had to put the sweater in a time out as I was starting to have some pretty nasty revenge thoughts. If I kept at it, things were going to get ugly. I’m not providing a picture as I’m still a little too angry…

To console myself I took to my Ravelry queue in search of something, anything else that would not make me feel like a complete knitting moron. Pattern were found that I liked, swatches were knit and discarded when it was discovered the fabric wouldn’t suit the pattern, the drawing board was revisited often…when it dawned on me, what I REALLY want is a Sarah Lund sweater…I mean just look at them! They even have a fan website dedicated to them!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please don’t be too offended when I give you a withering Fan-Boi/Nerd look of condecension, I can’t help it if you choose to live your life under a rock…The new episodes of AbFab even make a reference to The Killing & Sarah Lund! Anyhoo, if you are clueless to the power of the Sarah Lund sweater, seriously go watch The Killing & The Killing II and for all that’s good in the world, please do not waste your precious life on that wretched American version, it simply leaves you wanting.

So, I love me this show and am in deep love with her jumpers ( I may have screamed when one of the sweaters sustains a non-fatal injury in an episode). What I love almost as much as the sweaters themselves is the story of the how that simple wardrobe decision has inundated a small Faroe knitting business with orders for a Sarah Lund sweater and increased the income of the cottage knitters (most of whom are women supplementing their family incomes, a historically familiar story n’est pas?) who work for Gudrun & Gudrun. The sweaters Sarah wears are so popular that when Series 3 was announced…the pattern for the red sweater was part of the release!

The stash has enough Cascade Eco for me to knit the red sweater and I could probably knit the other two sweaters if I were to pick up some of the natural cream Eco, but that might be a bit too nerdy…not that it would really stop me…I’ll give it a think while I knit my Series III sweater & practice Sarah’s brooding look of deep concentration…

January was pretty decent for tackling my Resolution list. The HUGE stash organization was a massive help in kick starting my creative juices and I spent the better part of the month going through my pile of works in progress (WIP) and taking stock of what I have on the needles and if I still want to complete that project. There was some frogging and there was some completion.

One of my oldest WIPs was the crochet Queen Anne’s Lace scarf.

According to my Ravelry queue, I started it back in 2008 from two skeins of Manos Silk blend. I had a little over one foot left to crochet when I put it down and in the intervening years completely forgot how to make the stitches! Frustrated with my inabilty to read my work, I booked a private crochet lesson with Megan of LettuceKnit; she had me sorted in about 15 minutes and also got me started on the Wingfeathers Shawl in Handmaiden Mini Maiden. It is my current travel project, it’s small, simple and if my hook falls out of the stitch while it’s in my bag, I only have to pick up one stitch. Unlike that time my needles slipped out of a shawl I was knitting, causing me to rip back to the stockinette portion to pick up my stitches.

The structure of crochet fabric has caught my fancy so consequently, I have found crochet projects finding their way onto my Ravelry queue. The Wool-Eater blanket is top-most in my mind as it will lend itself nicely to making a healthy dent in my sock yarn stash.

Hot on the heels of completing the Queen Anne scarf, I hauled out another WIP. Last week I cast off Driven, my 2011 NaKniSewMo project.

Oh, how I love this sweater! My initial purpose in knitting it was to have a warm sweater to wear at work as it can get really cold on the front desk. We wear uniforms at work which have a jacket, but it’s made from poly-beast, which does nothing for keeping you warm, thankfully we are allowed to wear black sweaters or cardigans. I went to the stash for yarn, where I discovered, for some unknown reason, I didn’t have a sweater quantity of black yarn. Am still not quite sure how that happened, but it was quickly remedied by a November 1 panic striken run to The Purple Purl where I picked up some Diamond Luxury Collection Lima which worked a treat.

Continuing with my WIP submission mission, I decided it was time to come to terms with my “issues” with Every Last Yard.

Ravelry tells me that I cast on ELY on December 25, 2010 with the 2 skeins of IndigoDragonFly Merino Silk DK that Chris & the kids gave me for Christmas that year. I remember making excellent progress until I got to the lace portion, which is precicesly when my math skills decided to take a trip to Cuba! I knit, ripped & re-knit the same 2 inches of that ‘effing lace for a good few weeks before I tossed the sweater across the room with a cloud of very blue air trailing it. I picked it up earlier this month and yet again fought with that stupid lace section for about two weeks before my math skills returned from their extended vacation all bronzed and reeking of cigars & rum laced umbrella drinks. Turns out I kept forgetting the two stitches between the ribbed collar and the start of the lace pattern which would explain why I could never get that son of a motherless goat lace pattern to match up properly…a stiff drink and excessive use of stitch markers may or may not have followed this realization…

There were a few small/quick projects complete as well. The kids get a bit miffy if they see me knitting too many projects that are not for them, this is generally followed by demands for something handknit. Fortunately, they can be easily placated with smaller knitted items like the LyaLya Hoodie.

These hoodies take under a skein of Malabrigo to knit the adult size (reducing my collection of single balls of yarn by 2) and have the added advantage of negating the need for a scarf, something both my kids refuse to wear, but will bitch incessantly about the cold air going down their necks…

There were a few other WIPs that I finished, but forgot to photograph so they won’t get much of a mention here.

As productive as January was on the fiber front, I found myself floundering on two other resolutions: keeping ahead of the housework & getting back into the habit of meal planning. Heading into February, I’m going to use the How to Clean Your House in 20 Minutes a Day program and have complied a list of meals which will be printed out, cut into strips & tossed into a bowl for the kids to draw 4 each week (I choose 4 meals to compensate for left over meals). We’ll see how successful I was in adding these new routines to the household in 29 days…